Xbox/Bungie deal infuriated Steve Jobs

It has emerged that Apple boss Steve Jobs was enraged when he heard the news that Microsoft had struck a deal with Mac game experts Bungie.

Former Xbox man Ed Fries revealed that the Apple boss called Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to remonstrate with him over Xbox's acquisition of Bungie.

Fries explained: "As soon as we announced we bought Bungie, Steve Jobs called. He was mad at [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer and phoned him up and was angry because wed just bought the premier Mac game developer and made them an Xbox developer."

The story continued: "So, during the day, I got an email from Steve Ballmer asking me to phone Steve Jobs and calm him down about the whole thing. Anyway, we did this deal with Apple where wed port some PC games to the Macintosh and help Peter Tamte create this company to do it, and I had to go to a Mac developer conference and get on stage and talk about this whole new partnership. It was a pretty strange time."